Compact single-seat mobility aid equipment represented by a motorized wheelchair, etc., normally uses a joystick as operating means. A user uses a joystick to indicate direction by holding an end of the lever that can freely pivot in all directions with his/her hand and tilting the lever in an intended turn direction. Although the joystick provides easiness to allow to indicate all directions with a single lever, since the user always needs to indicate direction using his/her hand, the user has difficulty in performing operation when his/her hands are full of baggage, etc. In addition, since human's natural sense of direction indication does not coincide with manual tilt indication, there are issues such as the need for practice until the user gets used to direction indication operation. In addition, there is a drawback in that a joystick is difficult to be used by a rider having disability in his/her hands.
In view of the above-described conventional issues, there is proposed an operating means for estimating a rider's intention of direction change or acceleration/deceleration operation by detecting a physical variable quantity of a seat which occurs from a change in the posture of the rider, and controlling mobility equipment based on the estimation result (Patent Literature 1). In addition, in order to avoid erroneous equipment control caused by a change in the posture of a rider that does involve operational intention, such as when the posture is unconsciously changed at acceleration, the amount of change in the seat caused by a postural change that is not obviously intended such as at acceleration is detected in advance and the amount of change caused by an operational intention is corrected by the amount of change, whereby equipment control that accurately reflects an operational intention is enabled (Patent Literature 2).